Ahead of their time

I half heard an interview with someone who helped arrange the 1988 Nelson Mandela 70th anniversary concert. Apparently Paul McCartney was upset he hadn't been invited to perform, and said The Beatles had offered to do a Mandela concert in 1965.

The interviewee said he thought this was just an empty boast. After all, who'd really heard of Mandela in 1965? He'd only been in jail for a year.

Well, the guy later found that the people The Beatles had made the offer to had rejected it because he had not heard of them! I mean, who had?

In 1965? Only everyone else in the world!

I must say that this story made me happy to be a lifelong fan of the band.

Today was Mandela's funeral, and for some reason one of my old poems came back to my mind. I wrote it in 1972, and it was written from the point of view of an oppressed black person in a place like South Africa. It ended with a dream of future freedom. The poem may still exist in a box somewhere, but all I recall is the last two lines:

Then shall we say that white men have brains of dust,

Or let them hold their heads high, as we must?

Gosh, Truth and Reconciliation ahead of its time! I hadn't realised how forward-thinking I was age 19!